Visions of Night

As I struggle with my first significant source-light painting, and with finishing off an entire company of Panthers, I moved once again to my freeform scratchbuild/conversion. Every now and again I feel an urge to build things. It's a puzzle where the 'pieces' are whatever bitz I can find or get, and the 'picture' is as many historical or contemporary photos as I can hunt down.

With that said, I ended up with one 'unassembled' Panther from my two boxes to make the company. I figured I would turn it into a Tank Ace, until I made my company commander cool enough to make him a Tank Ace enough in his own right! It was during my Panther research I came across the Panther with night-vision setup, and the guys at Missing Lynx do a great job of detailing it and showing photos. I knew I had to have one. At first I contemplated doing a "Solution C" but it seems the prevailing belief is that Solution C (three scopes, one each for commander, driver, and gunner) was about as likely as a KV-5. Settling on the Solution A, I first set about making the back bin (which is the easiest), and then after significant delay, set to work on the scope. Here's the pieces I used:

Kudos to anyone who knows what that bottom-centre piece is from!

I clipped the back end of a leftover part from another model to form the base of the scope, which was glued to a plastic cylinder, itself on a small triangular piece of plasticard. The lamp is a leftover piece of pewter something which I was lucky enough to find in my scrap bin and almost exactly replicates the size of the device.

So hard to hold on to..

Assembled, this entire device is still only maybe 3 or 4 mm square, and while unfinished, it is now ready for mating to the panther ring.

Peekaboo

First, a commander from the Panzer IV H box was shaved down and slotted into the cupola. After that, the assembly was glued in place, making it look as though the commander is trying to line up the turret.

Finally, liquid greenstuff helped to make the various locking rings for the night vision scope itself. With this complete, the Night Panther is ready for stowage, and then painting!